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Old Nov 16th, 2010, 08:57 am
Sue
 
Join Date: Oct 8th, 2006
Location: Milan
Posts: 1,406
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Default Re: The adjective to modify "vocabulary"

vocabulary can be countable or uncountable:

1. With the meaning "some words" it's uncountable and singular : Today we're going to learn some vocabulary.
2. With the meaning "a person's total knowledge of the lexis of a language it's countable and singular : She's grammatically inaccurate but she has a good vocabulary.
3. It's countable and plural when used as a synonym for dictionaries, and especially in technical contexts such as computer programming.

You sometimes used it with meaning 1 and sometimes with meaning 2, so the grammar changes. For example :

She only has a small vocabulary / She doesn't have a very large vocabulary (= meaning 1, countable)
or
She knows a lot of vocabulary / She doesn't know much vocabulary ( = meaning 2 - uncountable)

You could also say :

Her vocabulary is poor/not very good /limited/adequate /good /excellent.

She has a basic level of vocabulary
Her vocabulary is at advanced level


She has/doesn't have) a wide (range of) vocabulary.
She has a restricted /limited range of vocabulary.
She lacks vocabulary.


However, it's difficult to give clear rules here about when you can use which adjective. It depends on things like :
- Are you using meaning 1 or 2?
- Is the sentence affirmative or negative?
- Is an adverb (quite, very etc) used to modify the adjective?
- Are you also using an expression like "range of" or "level of" ?

It's a complex area. if you use one of the expressions I've given above, exactly as I've included them, it will be OK. However, if you change the sentence from affirmative to negative, omit the adverb etc, it may no longer sound right.

One way to check is to type the phrase you want to use into Google and see if it comes up frequently. Use inverted commas to search for the complete phrase - eg "I have a large vocabulary" or "my vocabulary is limited"
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